How to Create A Compelling YouTube Strategy

According to Mary Meeker’s KPCB Internet Trends Report, by 2015, half of all mobile data traffic was already coming from video. In fact, an audience is 10x more likely to engage, share, and comment on a video than they are on other types of content. Videos are also more likely to convert.Yet one of the biggest misconceptions about YouTube marketing is that every video should be a fight to achieve viral status. This simply isn’t true, nor realistically attainable.

Your goal should be to build trust with your audience; 1,000 loyal engaging visitors is worth far more than a million stop-by visitors who don’t actually plan on following your brand beyond clicking on a single viral video. As you create more videos, you’re building an arsenal of content that’s full of SEO and will continue to provide resourceful information or entertainment long after it’s published.

Don’t Forget About SEO

While it’s important for you to create well-shot, engaging videos, it’s also important for you to have a solid foundation of SEO to make your videos easily discoverable. A ComScore study found that when you add video to your website, you can increase your chances of appearing on the first page of Google search results.

Just as would optimize your website for search engines, you should do the same for YouTube. When you carefully optimize different elements of your YouTube videos, you’re making it easy for users to find you both within the YouTube search platform and Google’s search engine. Of course, you’ll need to have conducted thorough keyword research prior to optimization. You should be optimizing titles, description, tags, categories, thumbnails, and closed captions.

Collaborate With Influencers

Influencers in your market can help your YouTube presence balloon, and should be implemented into your overall YouTube strategy. Conduct research to determine which influencers are relevant to your business. For example, if you owned a line of all-natural lipsticks, you’d want to reach out to influencers in the cosmetic industry. Once you’ve come up with an extensive list, start reaching out to them for influencer opportunities. Usually this involves exchanging free product or services in exchange for publicity.

Keep in mind that when you reach out to people, you want to do the work for them. This means explaining how they can benefit from the partnership, and even offering ways of angling a story, if applicable. This makes it much easier for them to work your business into their content strategy and link to your YouTube videos and other pages.

Create Interactive Content

According to a study conducted by BrandShare, 87% of people believe that should be able to interact with a brand in real-time. Unfortunately, despite the fact that YouTube is such a powerful marketing tool, many businesses aren’t combining content with interactive elements. Interactivity allows your audience to become much more engaged with your content, and makes them feel involved.

There are quite a few ways to go about creating interactive content. One of the easiest ways is using annotations in your video. This allows you to add multi-style copy to your video. This allows your viewers to click on external links or ingest additional bits of detail.

You can also create “Video Playlists” if your videos make sense when consumed in a chronological order. For example, let’s say you own an interior design company and are staging a luxury home for an open house. The first video might be an introduction to house staging and include a “before” house tour, while the second video would focus on house staging the living room, and so forth.

Some advertisers are already ahead of the curb by creating interactive ads. Check them out for ideas on creating interactive content.

Start Storymaking

According to Google, not only should you be storytelling, but creating unique ways of storymaking with your consumers. Essentially, this means that you want to get your customers and viewers in on your creative mapping of your campaign and brand.

With storymaking, your audience is taking part in the creation process. The soda brand Mountain Dew has achieved this several times. With their Art of DEW video series project, they called upon consumers who created art that inspired by the Mountain Dew brand. Each artist (and their work) was profiled in short, eye-catchy mini-docs. They also held several contests where fans of the drink could participate in the creation of some marketing materials (like ad campaigns) if they won.

Utilize Different Types of Video Content

As a business, you should be able to leverage all types of video content. This keeps your YouTube profile fresh and varied, and allows you to capitalize on all types of consumers. Otherwise, you can’t expect to always reach everyone in your market; different segments of your core audience prefer different ways of consuming content.

Of course, the type of content you produce varies depending on the brand, but for the most part, you can find creative ways of covering several video category types. Here are a few different types of videos you should include in your video lineup:

Educational/Tutorial Videos

For many brands, educational videos are the way to go. Because they’re so useful, they are often the most engaging. These are the videos that consumers are pausing and rewinding, and potentially watching over and over again. There are many ways to push “how to” videos — even if your brand isn’t necessarily educational. As previously mentioned, a real estate agent could post a video about house staging tips, while an ecommerce apparel owner could talk about how to layer summer clothing styles.

Product Demos

What better way to demonstrate your product or service potential than product demos? These are straightforward videos that provide detailed insight into what you offer. When working on product videos, be sure to discuss the benefits. Always make a script ahead of time, so you can outline areas that are most important.

Immersive 360-Degree Videos:

A survey conducted by Nikon found that 90% of consumers believe a 360-degree format creates a better viewing experience. Immersive 360-degree videos are a great way of allowing your YouTube visitors to truly step into your world. In real estate, this could be a 360-degree video tour of a home. In the music industry, it might be 360-degree access to a backstage event. No matter what industry you’re in, there’s plenty of ways to utilize this type of video. If you’re looking for inspiration, take a look at some of the best 360-degree videos on Youtube.

Company Culture Videos: In today’s business world, culture is a hot topic, and people appreciate a great work culture. Not only do culture videos allow you to humanize your business to consumers, but also be a great recruiting tool for potential employees.